parkour

as an active kid once, the things that compose le parkour did not have a name. all those jumps and climb and tricks we used to do on the playgrounds were just play and we paid them no mind.

when you see a four-year old kid jump around and climb obstacles in his trousers you dont think much of it. spot a grown man in whatever fashion he happened himself on that day you'd think him a burglar or some crazy immature fool.

as adults things change. we categorise. we tear down and we build up, only to tear down again. we cycle through judgements, explanations and rationalisations to figure out our world. it is an adult thing. we must, after all, grow. we cannot stop that.

le parkour is that rationalisation. it seeks to, more or less, define and refine the movements of play. in the end it is of much use. for, unlike children, adults may perceive value in things that are apart from the thing itself. play may be valued to reduce stress scooped up at work, biking as an entertaining way
to explore the countryside while getting exercise. a child will just bike, reaping its advantages without being concerned of the fact.

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that being said, i needed "le parkour" to get back to playing, just as i needed "jeet kune do" to cultivate that warrior spirit i felt was always there since i was a kid. these are just names. but as an adult, i need more help in transitioning from what Bruce Lee termed as "organised despair". notice in many
principles of eastern martial arts, most notably expressed in the writings of Miyamoto Musashi ("The Book of Five Rings") and Bruce Lee ("The Tao of Jeet Kune Do") that at the end part of the path (if there is indeed an end) the mind is to be freed of all conscious-ness regarding the thing being practised. "No-mind" as Miyamoto wrote.

ultimately, "le parkour" is the sign signifying the thing you are entering. it is not to be mistaken for the thing itself.

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i started parkour about a year and a half ago but never pursued it physically as i did mentally. i'd like to put the sole blame on the Philippine situation where almost every piece of ground in Makati City is private property and thus subject to the regulatory whims of the rich and paranoid. but i suppose i could blame myself and my laziness and my procastination.

i'd like to philosophise what i've learned while practicing parkour, but i feel this goes totally with the actual philosophy of my parkour: to do it rather than to talk about it. the more i talk about the philosophy of parkour, or what it's supposed to mean to me, the less my body engages. i'm tired of talking.

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today i put in 15 passe muraille from a hanging position. 10 "ass"-passement (my term) on my weak side. a group of kids got curious when i was doing 1.2 meter drops and were imitating me afterwards. friendly kids. showed them how to ass-pass-drop-land and passe muraille. maybe i'll get to see them again at the mini park, where i usually train.

public morality

this is what i figured, and to whom it applies to, may it apply to him or her. to those people it doesnt apply to, make it not apply to him or her.

morality, as we see it on television, movies, played out on the political fields, standing witness to the courtrooms of law and everyday-life, is, to me, a big farce, just as the charitable intent of the law is farce. if we go back the heydays maybe something better could be said.

public morality, or immorality, is a farce. it's a big self-righteous creature. it accuses, it evades, it deflects, it hides.

see this piece of news: on one side exhibitionists parade their synthetic-ness at a public area. moralists are aghast. lawmen contemplate lawsuit. dirty old men slaver. intellectuals light their bulbs and point their finger up. the exhibitionists say: "it's art."

but it's horseshit. the whole kaboodle is nothing but a farce.

the moralists are up to their same old tricks. but it's more than that: it's easy enough to dismiss black-robed-white-collared folks, who having lost all forms of the vernacular, as inept and obsolete. this does not address the very hyprocrisy of moralists. and if such hypocrisy is addressed, then it shall be found out that this hypocrisy runs in the blood of the most intellectual of intellectuals.

the lawmen go to law. here, it is easy enough to admit that whatever is law becomes well enough to be left alone at that. but it holds no more credence from the other man-made law of the moralists we had just described.

dirty old men are dirty old men. they could care as much about public morality as with their own morality. hence, dirty - old - men.

intellectuals are the dangerous lot. they're the modern men and women who rationalise the bullshit so evenly you'd hate to call it medium well. the hard part about intellectuals is that no one thinks of them as hypocrites. it could be that they preach no value they do not follow. or possible, they have no value from which to preach from. or they just simply dont give a shit. but is that really so?

the idea is this: for every accusation and defense we make, for or against a public morality there is the premise that this is how morality is defined as a matter-of-fact. a few more generations of this and we would have dissolved the concept of individual morality for a public one, where the only thing wrong is the only thing we see acted upon by entertainers who are dying for attention because they cant live life without extravagant cellular phones and foreign cars.

the fray continues with know-it-alls steeped in countless and, in my opinion, meaningless arguments about how to go about implementing a social morality. we have detractors for every conceivable issue. we have debates for everything. we love to hear ourselves talk; we are pumped when we make logical connections, rationalisations, appeal to sources and references, cause goosebumps and stuff like that. that is the modern man's warm hypocritical blanket: his ability to justify the actions of others; yet he is without a clue how to repent of his.

the moralist's appeal to dogma, the lawman appeal to constituted law, the dirty old man's dismissal to lust, the intellectuals rationalisations, the exhibitionists brain-dead appeal for "art's sake" and "freedom of speech" - all red herrings for which they enjoy themselves chasing around.

to a newspaper article asking "what's wrong with the world?", chesterson responded "dear sir, i am." but that is forgotten. the modern man cometh.

i dont know what i'm doing but i'll take it anyway

hullo.

not really my cup of tea here. just needed to post something on my brother's "blog" (whatever the hell that means). so here i am.

maybe i'll find some use for this in the future. hmm....



welcome, you are in thespread